Mudd, Surratt and Harbin

[RJNorton]

Kees, this still is not really what you are looking for, but have you read GATH's 1884 interview with Harbin? Harbin mentions Dr. Mudd numerous times in the interview and has some interesting things to say. The text of this interview is in Bob Summers' outstanding website. It is here.

Several items caught my eye including this:

"Booth made three visits to the vicinity of Bryantown, In October, in November, and in December, and each time stayed four or five days, invariably at Dr. Mudd's, though he would spend a day or two, perhaps, at the hotel in the village. Harbin met him on each of these visits. John Surratt, Atzerodt and Harold were often in that part of the country, and were made adjuncts of the scheme; and Booth brought into it two of his schoolmates from Baltimore — Arnold and O’Laughlin."

If Harbin's recollection to GATH were correct this would mean Booth met Mudd in October, 1864, which is earlier than other accounts I've seen which say they first met in November, 1864.

Harbin also says:

"For the past eighteen years people have been saying that Dr. Mudd never knew Booth until he happened to come to his house with a broken foot, and that he suffered a cruel imprisonment for setting the foot of a stranger. The fact is known to every relative of Dr. Mudd that he was in the abduction scheme from the very start, and that he and John Wilkes Booth were the first men, in that quarter of the country, at least, to discuss the plan and to suggest adherents. Mudd himself knew this so well that, to the day of his death, he never so much as threatened legal proceedings against any body who had imprisoned him, and if the Court-martial had been as fully aware of his connection with the plot as we now are he would have been hanged. It took perjury, threatening and all the resources of his community to save his life."